How far can you cheat 'geography'?`

dandevans

dandevans

Hi there, I'm in the process of storyboarding / making an animatic for my first short, and I'm wondering how much I can get away with in terms of locations not actually being in the same place.

For example, the main character in the film has a shop with a front customer-facing section and a back room which he travels between, and this is quite important to the story.

The location we (probably) have for the front of the shop unfortunately only has a door leading out into the back yard and it's quite obviously an exterior door, with a window next to it.

However, the location does also have a side area connected to the shop which although it doesn't actually contain a door easily could.

Would we be able to get away with showing the character walking into the side area (without showing whats in it) and then show him coming in a door in another physical location? Would the audience buy it without seeing him going into the door first?

Just wondered what your experiences were with this kind of thing and whether you could think of any good (or bad) examples of this kind of "cheating"?

Many thanks!
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Hi, Dan

I've no examples off the top of my head but that exact practice is done ALL THE TIME!
However, you just have to be clever and sensible about both how you shoot it and how you edit it.

"The location we (probably) have for the front of the shop unfortunately only has a door leading out into the back yard and it's quite obviously an exterior door, with a window next to it."
Block the window by putting something in front of it and build some crummy temporary thing to block light when exiting out the actual back door into the backyard.

A lot of it will depend upon editing and timing, even suggested by dialog, and throw in some assumptions as well.

Take your own camera and do a test in your own home.
- Exit your entry door
- Enter your bathroom.
- Turn around, exit the bathroom
- Exit the closet into the hallway.
- Enter the bedroom door
- Exit the garage door.

Just do some tests.
Look at the results and go "Ahah! THAT looks like shite! And THIS looks like it'll work!"
Be mindful of 180° rules.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Being mindful of continuous sound in the edit will help tremendously with this illusion.

Even if it's nothing overly-obvious (like the engine of a passing vehicle that is heard over multiple shots), something as subtle as room tone helps.

Be sure to grab some room tone in the different locations to use when editing.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Dan, its all about illusions. Each shot could be in a different location miles apart, but as long as you can make the audience believe the event is occurring in one location, you've won. Directors who've spent time in the editing suite become better filmmakers -- saving $$$, time, and the needless design of elaborate sets because they'll know what works in the fooling-the-audience business.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks for the advice people! Rayw - don't know why I hadn't thought of just testing it in that way, but I hadn't! :)

At the moment I'm creating a test version of the movie by cutting together rehearsal footage and audio and (crappy) animations done in Maya so that I can get a feel for the whole thing and create a pretty comprehensive shot list. I've built a virtual scale model of the location and have matched our real camera and lenses to virtual ones too, so it should be pretty accurate in terms of shot composition. It's just a little hard to tell with things like the door stuff because the model and animation is pretty basic, so you're having to imagine and forgive quite a lot already, and as I have zero experience as a filmmaker I don't quite have the 'feel' for what you can get away with and what you can't. But shooting and editing test footage is definitely the way forward I think!

Like you say GuerillaAngel, trying out the editing now is REALLY useful - I've found so many problems already that I can fix now before we shoot rather than having to edit round them in the end!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Oh and thanks for the sound tip FrankLad - again it's something I've noticed in the test is that sound continuity and sometimes sound on cuts really helps with the flow - but hadn't thought of adding things like cars driving past etc to increase the number of audio reference points the viewer has. My sound guy is fairly experienced so hopefully he'll nail all this stuff and I won't have to worry about it, but it's good to know nonetheless :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You're fine. You can totally make this work.

The audience doesn't necessarily need to see the door. I would probably choose my shots so that we see the door, from one location. But once we're in the other location, we don't need to see the door, the character can just enter the shot, and if edited correctly, the audience will sub-consciously connect the two locations in their head.

The following clip was shot in two different houses. One was shot at day, the other at night. In the context of this thread, because you're already looking for it, you should be able to easily see the differences in lighting, etc. But if you're just watching the movie, unaware of behind-the-scenes stuff, I seriously doubt anyone, even a keen-eyed filmmaker, would think anything like, "hey, wait a minute, that looks like a different location".

http://vimeo.com/35227504
PW: indietalk
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
nice example, CF!

two shots between 2:34 to 2:42 in my recent short film "Quickie in the Kitchen" are taken at two different places.. As I was editing the movie, I realized that i'm missing the shot of the car driving up, so I quickly ran outside of my house, slapped the camera on the tripod, and recorded myself driving up..

These two locations are about 30 miles apart :) match the lighting, and the sound will do the magic of blending everything in!

PS. That is me in the car driving up :)
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Awesome examples, thanks very much! Both work just fine don't they? I must say the car one is particularly impressive as you really cannot tell at all, even when you know about it (think the colour grading helps tie it all together a lot).

The other one is a little more noticeable when pointed out but still completely within the bounds of acceptability - don't think it would even register if I wasn't aware of the trick.

Cracker Funk, I am intrigued to know why that guy is wearing what he's wearing!? :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
As states above, this is quite doable :)

If I was you, I would find a local artist to supply a big-enough painting to put in front of the window or find whatever you can that will work. Also u can block the sunlight with anything black -- garbage bags, construction paper, etc.

Then you can make a quick "canopy / tent" with pvc pipes to go outside the back door and cover the tent with black fabric. Now when the person walks out the back door, it seems as if they are walking into a dark room.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hey joey - yeah I thought about doing exactly that - think it would work except for one thing - the door in the other room opens the wrong way, so it would be to the left of the character in one shot, and to the right in the next :/

One thing I did think of is flipping all the footage that we shoot in the back room so the door matches but I reckon this might create a slightly uncanny feeling as the actors faces would be flipped too, and faces are not symmetrical. That might not be such a bad thing though as weird stuff goes on in the back room, so I could pretend it was deliberate to increase the feeling of things being not-quite-right :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Seriously, you don't understand what you are dealing with. I'm the guy who nailed through a water pipe in the attic room the day after the entire central heating system had just been replaced and had to call the plumber back on a Sunday to rescue us.

I don't even trust myself in my own house, let alone someone else's property they've very kindly agreed to let me use :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
dandevans said:
My sound guy is fairly experienced so hopefully he'll nail all this stuff and I won't have to worry about it, but it's good to know nonetheless :)
Click to expand...

Just make sure to budget the TIME for him to take care of business - room-tones, dialog wilds, etc.

I know how impatient people can get when on location, and the first thing to get shorted is the sound. The trouble is you ALWAYS end up regretting that decision when it comes time to do the audio post. And your final product suffers because of it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yeah, he's always complaining about that at work too (we make computer games for a day job) - "no-one ever thinks about the sound!"

Don't worry though, I agree with him :)

When you say "dialog wilds" do you mean recording dialog on-set with no camera rolling, so you've got more audio options in the edit? - that's my very limited understanding of it, but if so why not just record the whole scene again with camera?

Is it just because it's quicker to do only the audio?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top